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Mothers' Human Capital and Childcare in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Heather Joshi  and
Hugh Davies
Hugh Davies
Affiliation:
Social Statistics Research Unit, The City University, and Department of Economics, Birkbeck College
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Abstract

Childcare may affect the earnings of mothers, not just by enabling them to take employment while using it, but also by conserving human capital and increasing earnings at later stages of the mother's life. This paper simulates the lifetime earnings of a ‘typical’ British mother under a variety of childcare regimes. Childcare which continues into the years of schooling is particularly valuable. For a woman who changes her labour force participation behaviour as a result of the availability of childcare, the resources generated are shown to exceed the resource costs of the childcare, and the revenue gain to the exchequer may exceed the costs of 100 per cent subsidy.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 146 , November 1993 , pp. 50 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

∗

Social Statistics Research Unit, The City University, and Department of Economics, Birkbeck College, respectively. Heather Joshi thanks the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Economic and Social Research Council for financial support. This paper has benefitted from the comments of Nick Oulton and three anonymous referees.

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